God under Howard: The Rise of the Religious Right in Australian Politics

God under Howard: The Rise of the Religious Right in Australian Politics

Excerpt

God Under Howard is the result of long cooking with contributions from many people. That there was an untold story in Australia's negotiations between religion and politics, and that our collective poor understanding of those negotiations was working against the interests of the most marginalised in Australia, first came home to me in 1995. Having grown up in Sydney, I moved to Adelaide in 1989, married, and came to feel partly like a South Australian. On leave in Sydney from my job as a religious studies academic, I became fascinated by the unfolding drama of Hindmarsh Island. Religious traditions were being dragged through first a scorching trial by media and, eventually, the full blaze of a Royal Commission. As the story progressed, it became increasingly obvious that among the many shortcomings the saga revealed was a woeful lack of understanding about religion on the part of media, lawyers and the public. As speculations about the supposed content of a secret-sacred tradition swirled through the stifling Adelaide media world and then were taken as fact and subjected to empirical tests in the Royal . . .